In Her Dreams
by Authoress-in-training
Summary: After all, everything else has betrayed her.  It only makes sense that eventually, her dreams would too.


**Author's Note: Can I just start by saying how much I love/hated "All the Way"? _Loved_ it because, well, it was an amazing episode (Amanda vs. Nikita? How epic was that?), and now that Alex is a field agent (even though that was suspiciously fast... ah well, who cares? Not me, that's for sure!), the plot is sure to thicken. _Hated_ it because - and this should be obvious, because I'm sure most of you hated it for the same reason - WHY DID THOM HAVE TO DIE? (I actually started crying - that's how much it got to me. Of course, I am the kind of person who cries at sad stuff in movies and on TV, but still.)**

**Right after watching "All the Way", I got about three different ideas for Alex-centric one-shots based on the ending (plus a new songfic-ish thing based on Emily Osment's song "All the Way Up", which is now stuck in my head and I am determined to do _something_ with). This is the first one that I've finished, so expect the others to come at some point soon-ish (I am nothing if not a notoriously slow writer).**

**Enjoy!**

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Alex wakes with a start, gasping for air and shooting straight up like she's been suffocating. Her eyes adjust to the darkness quickly, and her heart starts to pound as she takes in the surroundings, which look nothing like her room at Division. Mind racing, she immediately starts calculating an escape route based on what she can see.

Then she remembers why she's no longer in her cell at the Division headquarters, and all the details of the last few days come rushing back to her. Exhaling, Alex flops back down onto the bed, all chances of going back to sleep lost now.

The one remotely good part about her becoming an agent – and the circumstances that preceded it – is getting out of the main headquarters, even if she's not allowed out in the real world without permission yet. After the events that led to her promotion, the last place Alex wants to be now is the Division headquarters, which is _still_ in disarray after the explosion she'd created to allow Nikita to escape. At least here, in her own apartment, she's _alone_, with no one to bother her, or pick fights with during lunch, or yell at her for being here instead of there.

Of course, the down side of all this alone time is that it's forced her to think about _him_.

_Thom_.

Tears prick at the corner of her eyes just thinking about him, and she swallows back the sour lump of guilt in her throat. She buries her face in her hands, her tiny body shaking with the effort of her sobs, although no sound escapes her mouth.

(Another perk of her new apartment: no one to see her cry.)

It's been a few days, but his face never fades from her mind. Sometimes she'll think he's gone – that she's been granted reprieve from this torture – but then at the most random times, he'll suddenly force himself back into the forefront of her mind, and she'll break down crying all over again. Even in her sleep, she doesn't get a break. If anything, it's worse. When she's awake, its just flashes of his face, but her dreams are a whole other story.

Sometimes she replays their conversations – every interaction they ever had. Sometimes it's the horrible, awful, stays-with-her-forever moment when she accidentally pulled the trigger. Sometimes it's their last moments together – Alex wonders if she'll ever be able to hear the phrase "_You're gonna see me_" and not burst into tears.

But the most torturous of all are the ones that spring from pure fantasy – things that never happened, and now never will. Them fighting side-by-side on a mission, him covering her back, keeping her from being killed by an enemy assassin. The two of them, escaping from headquarters with Nikita as Division burns in the background. Fumbling awkwardly through a dinner date, like two normal people. Spending lazy mornings wearing only a bed sheet, lying in his arms. Walking into a church in a white dress, staring at him waiting for her at the end of the aisle. A honeymoon somewhere exotic, on the beach. Her holding a tiny brown-haired baby in her arms as he stares at them both with an unmistakable love in his eyes. The two of them sitting side by side on the porch, old and wrinkly, watching their grandchildren play in the front yard. Snippets of a life that's lost to her forever now.

Every night, without fail, Thom enters her dreams. Every night she wakes up sobbing into her pillow.

(Everything else has betrayed her. It only makes sense that eventually, her dreams would too.)

Nikita had warned her about this – about making friends, becoming attached _(falling in love_). But somehow, Alex had thought she could ignore the older woman's warnings, that she would somehow be above all that. It only makes the truth even harder to bear now.

As her breathing finally starts to return to normal, Alex reaches up to wipe away her tears. The rational part of her – the part of her that was trained both by Division and its most notorious former agent – knows that she has to let him go. Emotional baggage like this will only drag her down, and she can't afford any missteps now – to give Percy any reason to think he made a mistake in promoting her. But the other part of her – the part underneath all the mercenary training and counter-intelligence espionage that's become her life now, past the junkie she used to be and the series of misfortunes in her childhood that brought her there, that's still an eighteen-year-old girl who just lost the man she loved – refuses to stop mourning him. It may be torturous when she wakes up, but in those ever so fleeting moments in her dreams when they're together again, she can forget. Imagine they're reality, that he's not gone and that she wasn't forced to kill him (because the guilt from that is enough to keep her awake at night).

Giving up the dreams means losing the last link to Thom that Alex has left.

And doing that… _that_ would be pure torture.

_When you're dreaming with a broken heart, waking up is the hardest part_

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**Author's Note: So? How was it?**

**Doesn't that bit from "Dreaming with a Broken Heart" seem so fitting? I challenge anyone brave enough to write an Alex/Thom songfic based on the ending of "All the Way" with that song. (As an extra incentive, I'll let whoever takes up the challenge get an idea shout-out in my Michael/Nikita backstory fic-in-progress.)**

**Like I said, keep an eye out for the others - tentatively titled "Your Fault" (I'm experimenting with second person POV - let's see how that turns out) and "Survivor's Guilt".**

**And before I go, did everyone have a good Christmas? Are you looking forward to New Year's? (I sure am...)**

**Ciao,**

**- Authoress**


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